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Author Topic: Building my Pale Ale recipe  (Read 1999 times)

Offline madscientist

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Building my Pale Ale recipe
« on: April 03, 2012, 09:03:56 am »
So I'm brewing a pale ale this coming weekend with Columbus and Mt. Hood hops.  Grain bill is going to be Munich/Victory/2-Row.  I decided I am not going to use Crystal malt for a change.  I am using Columbus and Mt. Hood hops, and a third, either Citra, Amarillo, or Cascade.  My question is if I should use both the third hop and Mt. Hood late in the boil, or use Mt. Hood exclusively late in the boil and use the third hop for dry hopping?

Homebrewed since 2010

Offline TrippleRippleBrewer

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Re: Building my Pale Ale recipe
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2012, 08:26:41 am »
Not sure on your brewing process but personally I use an immersion chiller and just recently started recirculating my wort for quicker cooling. I'd been experiencing very little aroma from late hop additions because the length of time the wort sat near boiling with the late hops steeping was too long in my opinion. I was getting more bittering out of them than desired and not much else. I find even with late additions and recirculation giving me quicker temp reductions, I get little aroma in comparison to dry hopping. Dry hopping for me makes all the difference in the world between two given beers.

That said, you have a lot of options here and it depends on what you like. Personally I like my pale ales to be quite hoppy to the point some people might consider them IPA save for the gravity and alcohol content.

I've used Mt Hood, but not in a pale ale and I'm not sure how well it would go with the "C" hops but I imagine Amarillo would be nice with it.

If this were my beer, I'd probably have a Columbus addition at around 15 minutes, forgo any further kettle additions, and dry hop with Amarillo and/or Mt Hood of at least an ounce total and see what you think.

Neither is high alpha so you should not get overly powerful aroma and flavor.

For comparison, my last pale ale was dry hopped with an ounce of Citra and a half ounce of Summit. Both are very high alpha and I expect very noticeable effects from it. Last pale ale I dry hopped with Citra was excellent.

Cheers